Cons

Bottom Line

Twist by Doist takes on team messaging and adds an air of calm to it. The app's excellent for teams that are spread across multiple location and has a few standout features, but also room to grow.

14 Sep 2019

Team chat apps alleviate the need to rely on email for internal communication. While Slack may be the most well known of the bunch, it isn't necessarily the best fit for every team. Twist is the least conventional team chat app I've seen. It was built by a distributed, remote-first company called Doist, which also makes the app Todoist. The app's design works better for team members who don't necessarily have many overlapping work hours, a common problem for teams spread across multiple time zones.

In its structure, Doist is closer to email than Slack or any other Slack alternative. It compartmentalizes conversations similar to how email does, subject lines and all. The layout and design don't encourage quick, pithy replies the way Slack's do. It doesn't have the same sense of immediacy, which can lead to more thoughtful—though perhaps longer—posts. The app still has room to grow, however. It doesn't include audio or video calls, and the number of integrations and add-ons is limited. If you prefer a fast-paced messaging app where you can quickly add all kinds of extras, Slack is the better pick, and it's our Editors' Choice. If you're searching for something to replace email that doesn't feel frantic, then Twist is a great option.

Twist Pricing and Plans

Twist has two options: Twist Free and Twist Unlimited ($5 per person per month). If you're in either education or the nonprofit world, you can apply for a 50% discount. Teams with 200 people or more can contact Doist directly to enquire about enterprise-grade options.

With a Twist Free account, there are no limits on how long you can use the account or how many people you can invite to join. Your team's search history is restricted, however, to only the most recent month's worth of messages. The team gets 5GB of shared storage space for uploaded files, and you can only create five integrations with other services natively. You do get guest access, meaning you can invite people from outside your organization to join channels.

Twist Unlimited costs $6 per person per month or $60 per person per year. It includes everything in the Free account, and removes the limits on searches, storage, and the number of integrations. Unlimited account holders also get priority support.

How does Twist compare with other business messaging apps on price? It's cheaper than Slack, which costs $8-$15 per person per month depending on the tier of service you choose. It's about the same as Flock, which costs $6 per person per month or $54 per person per year for its paid account. Glip charges a little less at $5 per person per month for its feature-rich Standard account.

Lower prices can be found, however. Zoho, a company known for competitively priced cloud-based software, uses a sliding scale for its messaging app, called Zoho Cliq. Prices ranges from $1 to $3 per person per month.

Getting Started With Twist

Twist has apps for Mac, Windows, the web, iOS, and Android. Signing up for a Twist account and inviting others to join takes minutes. When you add more users to your account, you can classify them as admins, users, or guests. Customizing your account by adding details about your job title and a profile picture is equally straightforward and easy.

Conceptually, Twist differs from other team messaging apps. It starts with channels, just as other apps do, which are like topic headers for conversations. Within channels are threads, which are unique to Twist; other apps use the word "thread" but it means something else in Twist.

In Twist, threads are the conversation. Each channel is no more than a topic. The channel itself doesn't really have an ongoing conversation. All conversations are necessarily part of a thread. In that sense, each thread in Twist is similar to an email thread. One email message kicks off a conversations, and it continues so long as other people reply to that initiating message.

Let me explain how that's different from other team messaging apps. In Slack, for instance, threads are offshoots from the ongoing conversation of the channel. In that app, every channel has a river of comments, and those comments might stick to a particular topic for a while and then change course. A thread allows anyone in the channel to branch off from the main conversation into a new window where replies to only that one idea are easier to read.

Understanding how threads and channels operate in Twist as compared with other apps is key to understanding what makes Twist unique.

Twist's Philosophy

In most other team messaging apps, every channel confronts you with a scrolling list of chatter. It looks more like text messaging than email. Think about how a text message conversation favors brevity but email allows for (if not encourages) longer messages. It can feel awkward to write a one-word email, but answering a text with a one-word reply is par for the course.

The same comparison is true between Twist and other messaging apps. Based solely on the design of the app, starting a new thread with a very short message seems like it will come off as rude. In Slack, I wouldn't think twice of posting a message that's incredibly brief.

Maybe it's starting to sound like Twist is too similar to email. It remains different in a few key ways. For one, all threads posted inside a channel are visible to everyone in that channel. Email, of course, requires recipients that you must specify. You can still flag individuals' attention to a thread in Twist by putting @ signs before their names, but otherwise, whether you choose to participate in a thread is up to you.

Something I'd like to see Twist add is the ability to merge threads. If two people start two threads that are similar and in the same channel, there's currently no way to merge them or move one thread into the other.

Threads in Twist are meant, I believe, to change behavior. Their design can shape a team's customs and norms. This same attitude is evident in other areas, such as Twist's tutorial videos that give as much advice on best practices as they do instruction for use. When you start a new direct message, Twist tells you: "Don't expect an immediate response. Teams are more productive when everyone can disconnect to focus and respond when they're ready. Instead of saying 'You there?', just ask your full question and check back in later."

DMs, Inbox, Team Members, and Groups

In addition to channels and threads, Twist offers direct messaging among individuals and groups. A toolbar at the top of the screen lets you jump between threads and messages with ease. There's also an inbox, which highlights messages you missed since you last viewed the app, regardless of the channel in which they appeared.

Another item on that toolbar is Team. Click it, and a list of everyone who has joined your account appears. Next to each name you can see their permission level, too. Admins can manage the team by inviting and removing people, as well as adjust teamwide settings. Members can create new channels, invite other members to join channels, and otherwise have normal access to use the account. Guests are restricted members who can only access channels to which they have been invited by a member or admin.

Within the Team section, you can also create groups. Groups are similar to distribution lists in email. They are sets of people that you can message or flag attention to all at once, such as managers, sales staff, or a particular committee.

Settings and Options

Twist includes a few features that are exquisite little details, my favorite being Time Off status. From the settings, you schedule your status to show when you'll be away for an extended time, whether for vacation, parental leave, or any other reason. When you use this setting, Twist changes your profile picture to one that indicates you're not available, making it easy for everyone to see. It also snoozes all your notifications during the time you select. In certain views, your colleagues see the exact date you're expected to return.

I wish there were an option for no known date of return, for those upsetting circumstances when you don't know when you'll be back. There isn't. You must pick an end date for the status to take effect. I suppose you could schedule an optimistic return date and simply update it as needed, but "unknown" would be better.

Twist has Do Not Disturb options, too. You can schedule certain days and hours for DND status, or select a period of time, such as 30 minutes, if you need an immediate period without interruption.

Another feature I like is the ability to edit messages, which Slack lets you do as well but there's a time limit in Slack. But you can edit more than just the text in Twist. If you mistakenly post a message in the wrong Channel, you can fix that, too.

Twist has a somewhat new feature for closing a thread once it has been resolved. It's a great way to keep information available while also indicating that the matter at hand has reached some kind of conclusion. When you apply the resolved status to a thread, you also can add a note summarizing the resolution, which other people see whenever they view the thread.

Room for Improvement

Notifications are a huge part of team messaging apps, and Slack excels at them. Twist does all right with notifications, but it could be better. You can get notifications via desktop, mobile device, or email for a good number of actions, such as when you're added to a team, removed from a team, notified in a thread, and so forth. Custom notifications for keywords are missing, though. In Slack, you can be notified any time someone posts certain words. It's truly one of the best features in Slack, and I'd love to see Twist copy it.

You also can't pin messages in Twist, which you can do in Slack and other messaging apps.

Twist offers some integrations with other apps, including Integromat and Zapier. Both are services that facilitate making integrations between apps that don't natively integrate. In other words, you can connect to Integromat or Zapier and through them connect even more apps and services to Twist. Twist also lets you build your own integrations using webhooks and other simple tools. That's a fine start, but it's a long way from the long list of integrations and add-ons that Slack supports.

Twist doesn't bother with audio calls, video calls, or screen sharing, though it does integrate with Wherein (formerly Appear.in) if you want to make it easier to start video meetings from inside your chat app.

Slack recently added an indicator showing someone's local time when they're in a different time zone than you. It's really helpful, especially if you see the person you want to message is only 30 minutes away from starting their workday or a few minutes from wrapping up. Whether it changes your behavior depends on your team's etiquette, but it's a feature I imagine would be a wonderful addition to Twist. Currently, you have to view your team member's profile page to know their time zone.

Changing Behavior

Twist is a true alternative to Slack, offering a service that's similar, but conceptually different. Rather than imitate Slack's frenetic interface and pace, Twist brings an air of calm to internal team communication. It's closer to email than other messaging apps, while still eliminating or mitigating many of the problems inherent to email. It has a few standout features, as well as some room to grow. Slack remains PCMag Editors' Choice for team messaging apps because of its rich feature set and long list of integration options, but Twist is an outstanding alternative for teams that need something different.

Before joining PCMag.com, she was senior editor at the Association for Computing Machinery, a non-profit membership organization for computer scientists and students. She also spent five years as a writer and managing editor of Game Developer magazine, … See Full Bio